CAPT Luann Barndt, Coast Guard Chair at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, left this great comment regarding field employment of social networking on my Facebook Fanpage. She gave me permission to share it here:
I am currently TAD helping to teach the Seminar on Transatlantic Civil Security (STACS 2009-2) to 38 international and US students (representing 25 countries) at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. One of the goals of the program is continued outreach and sharing of best practices among graduates and future Marshall Center students. While speaking with the Dean, he mentioned the Marshall Center was considering social media to meet that goal. I shared the articles on social media (included below) with the faculty and students and started a STACS 2009-2 alumni group. As I write this, I can see that 12 of the 38 students are online with 25 of the 38 included in the alumni group. Many of these students joined facebook for the first time. We are working toward helping the remaining students join facebook and our group before we graduate on Wed. This has been a fantastic tool to share professional information as we initiated threads relating to the course topics such as: pandemic flu; social media; and incident management. We are looking forward to keeping in touch to continue the professional dialogue as we return to our respective countries. I am proud that the USCG is leading the way in leveraging this valuable communication medium.
As described in the article "Social Media and the National Security Professional", social media is an emerging communication technology.
11 Reasons You Can't Ignore Social Media in 2009
10 Principles of Social Media
Military brass joins wired troops. Admirals and generals hope to connect with soldiers via their own Facebook pages and blogs. But will they tweet?
The article above describes the use of social media by senior military leaders including:
Gen. William Ward, Commander of US Africa Command
Adm. Thad Allen, Commandant of the Coast Guard
Gen. Gene Renuart, Commander of US Northern Command
Admiral Stavridis, Commander of US Southern Command
